The future of Europe is not in Ukraine, but in Russia. The latest survey by the European Center for Foreign Relations leaves no room for doubt. Most Europeans believe that they will have no security until Russia is defeated and Putin replaced.
Doing so, however, is much more difficult than returning the occupied territories to Ukraine. It implies going back to 1991, when everything was to be done and everything was possible. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union provided the opportunity for the European Common Home, the space for collaboration that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, thought of as the most natural.
But this implied a pact between equals that was not possible. The United States and the EU, led by Germany, read the end of the Cold War as a victory for democracy over Marxism. Russia had to conform to the liberal order. There was no other and for two decades Russia conformed.
Putin, recently come to power, was one of the first heads of state to offer help to the US, after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He also provided support in Afghanistan. In return, the US facilitated Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. The G-7 became the G-8. The Russian generals had an office in the NATO headquarters.
The poor and dirty Moscow that I knew in 1996 had nothing to do with the one that hosted the 2018 World Cup final. Vladimir Putin had ordered the post-Soviet chaos. Two decades of stability and prosperity had spruced up the urban landscape and filled the main avenues with luxury and large-scale stores.
Prosperity, however, has not expanded the spheres of freedom and the Government has returned to destroy the lives of the Russians, as was the case in the Soviet Union. The repression stifles the protests and nostalgia does the rest. The USSR is still in the memory of many Russians and the Orthodox Church underpins nationalism.
Russia was Europe. Dmitri Medvedev's presidency (2008-2012) had been a period of clear openness. Energy dependence guaranteed, as Germany believed, a frank and fruitful relationship.
The Moscow of 1996 survived under the heavy inheritance of the USSR. The precariousness was bearable. Not only because the population was used to it, but because the freedom of a new world was breathed. The press criticized President Yeltsin, called for his resignation, and no one censored it.
Russia is today an inquisitorial state where criticizing the armed forces is punishable by up to fifteen years in jail. Justice treats a serial killer more kindly than a dissident.
The violence and lies of the state that marked the end of the USSR have returned and it is not clear why. It may be because of the economy, the impossibility of consolidating a middle class beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, or because of the very nature of Russian power, the vertical structure that Putin, a former KGB agent, has created to sustain himself. No one better than he embodies the post-Soviet leadership. He feels emperor.
Putin has not lost any of the stakes in which he has participated. He subdued Chechnya, invaded Georgia and the Ukraine, annexed Crimea, helped Bashar al-Assad win in Syria and supports several African satraps.
The United States and the EU have reacted to this aggressiveness with sanctions that punish the Russian economy but do not break it. GDP has barely fallen by 2.2% in this first year of war. India and China buy the gas and oil that Europe does not want.
China and violence support Putin and for the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrujovich there is no other solution than to crush him. "It's not to be trusted," he told me Tuesday over lunch. All he can sign is a piece of paper. There is no future as long as I remain in the Kremlin."
Andrujovich does not see a path to peace. No one can yet push Russia and Ukraine to negotiate. And even so, he knows that the victory of his country, the definitive triumph that he so desires, will not guarantee stability in Europe. He doesn't say it, but he knows better than anyone that Russia is necessary for peace. That is why French President Emmanuel Macron talks about defeating Russia without crushing it. "We have to be ready for the day when Russia becomes part of Europe again," he says.
Europe is not Europe without Russia and Russia is not Russia without Europe. Andrujovich knows this, although, of course, he now prefers to continue fighting.
